Bolin: Week 8 NHL Power Rankings

I give thanks for my family. My wife and I were blessed to have our first child this summer and life is superb at the Bolin household.

I give thanks for my family. My wife and I were blessed to have our first child this summer and life is superb at the Bolin household.

I give thanks for my friends. Because of said child, we don’t get out to see them as often as we’d like, but appreciate them being there.

I give thanks for my job. It’s the most fun I’ve had in "working" in years.

I give thanks for candy corn. Because why not.

I give thanks for a house and home. The commute from Springdale isn’t quite as bad you’d think.

I give thanks for hockey. On those nights my wife is at work, and it’s just me and Rhys, my son, we can sit down in front of the television or tablet or phone or wherever and enjoy a game. My wish is to instill the love for the game to him like I had with sports when I was a child. If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it. No sweat. Some of my fondest memories are sitting with my grandfather, father, uncles and cousins as a young boy and watching Monday Night Football. Hopefully Rhys and I can make the tradition out of Hockey Night in Canada.

Hey, they have Thanksgiving there, too.

Week 8 NHL Power Rankings

30. Buffalo Sabres (28) - The Sabres lost three games last week and managed a grand total of three goals. One in each. Coaching motivation only goes so far when there’s not a lot of talent on the roster.

29. Florida Panthers (29) - Florida looked moderately competent in its five-game road trip out west. Wins over Colorado and Vancouver was golden, but losses to Edmonton and Calgary were not.

28. Edmonton Oilers (30) - The Oilers won three straight games! Yes, that sentence deserves an exclamation mark, if only because it probably won’t happen again all year. What was the cause for such an outburst? Calgary, Columbus and Florida. Edmonton promptly followed their high with a 5-1 loss to Chicago. Welcome back to Earth, boys.

27. Calgary Flames (27) - The trade winds are blowing mightily in Calgary. The Flames are rebuilding and everyone knows it. Thanksgiving is generally when the rumor mill starts a-churning. Expect Calgary to be one of the first dominoes to fall.

25. New York Islanders (23) - My goodness, has this team gotten bad quickly or what. The Matt Moulson and picks-for-Thomas Vanek trade now looks like an unmitigated disaster. The Islanders are flailing.

24. Winnipeg Jets (21) - Do you know how tiring this is? Up. And down. Up. And down. If it’s this bad for me as a viewer, what do you think actual Jets fans are going through?

23. Carolina Hurricanes (20) - Carolina held on just long enough without Cam Ward to give themselves a chance. Since his return, the Canes are 1-2-1. They need to make a push quickly.

22. Ottawa Senators (X) - Ottawa has one win in its last five and stretch with Washington, Vancouver and Detroit coming. Maybe even more than the Hurricanes, the Senators are in danger of falling all the way out of the race by one-third mark.

21. Nashville Predators (25) - Every time you want to write them off, they put together a run like they did over the last week. Preds scored wins over Detroit, Toronto and Phoenix. The only fear is that in those three wins - and in a loss to New York - they managed 10 goals.

20. New Jersey Devils (22) - The California road trip has few survivors. New Jersey made it out alive. It’s no small task beating Anaheim and Los Angeles in SoCal. Devils can make some real inroads with two games against Carolina and one against Buffalo this week.

19. Phildelphia Flyers (24) - Craig Berube’s team is on a roll, even with a loss to Florida on Monday. Most imporantly, Claude Giroux, Matt Read and Brayden Schenn are on a roll. It means Philly is getting the primary and secondary scoring. Heck, either one would have been better than what they were.

18. Washington Capitals (19) - I was hesitant to buy in to what the Capitals had been doing, and given their last week, it was with reason. Sure, the losses were to three pretty good teams, but if you want to compete, especially in the weaker East, you need to beat at least one of them.

17. Tampa Bay Lightning (9) - Crash. That California road trip claimed another. Tampa fell at Phoenix, at Los Angeles, at San Jose, at Anaheim. It stinks to drop them this far since all four of those teams are in the top 10 of these rankings. But if they’re legit, they’ll climb back up. A win over the Rangers on Monday is in the right direction.

16. Vancouver Canucks (14) - It’s easy to look at the West and say it’s so stacked, so loaded that one team will just be unlucky to miss the playoffs. It’s hard, however, to say that if it were the Canucks who were left out. Two wins in the last 10 games isn’t the mark of a playoff team.

15. New York Rangers (17) - Still not totally on the boat with this team, but a couple good wins on the road at Dallas and Nashville are decent.

14. Detroit Red Wings (16) - Johan Franzen is the team’s third-leading goal scorer with six. Four have come on the powerplay. The Red Wings have some serious concerns when it comes to secondary scoring. And until that fixes itself, the best will remain out of their reach.

13. Dallas Stars (12) - A 6-1 loss at St. Louis was one of those things. A crash game. Dallas proved it was kind of a fluke - and did it themselves to someone - three nights later against Anaheim. The most positive was that it came at home, where Dallas hadn’t won in five straight.

12. Toronto Maple Leafs (13) - See, that’s what happens when you give up so many shots all the time. It bites you at some point. Six-nil to the Blue Jackets. The Blue Jackets! We’ll learn something with a road trip to Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Montreal this week.

11. Montreal Canadiens (18) - Steve Yzerman has to think long and hard about making Carey Price his No. 1 goaltender for Team Canada in Sochi this winter. Canadian, and Canadien, fans go through stages of love and hate with Price, but man, it’s all love right now.

10. Phoenix Coyotes (3) - Had to figure Phoenix couldn’t survive the way it was playing. Living on the edge with goal-scoring and defense isn’t the hallmark of a Dave Tippett team. They lost three straight last week and things get no easier for the next two.

9. Los Angeles Kings (6) - Ben Scrivens continues to be a superb replacement for the injured Jonathan Quick. But the goal-scoring has dried up the last couple games.

8. Pittsburgh Penguins (11) - Monday night’s showdown against Boston was everything a hockey fan could have wanted. There are no doubts the Pens and Bs are the two best teams in the East right now. And that’s fantastic.

7. Minnesota Wild (7) - The State of Hockey is as big as its been since the return of the NHL. The best thing about the Wild’s recent success is they’re winning in all different fashions. Comebacks. Shutouts. High-scoring affairs. Special teams showcases. There’s no one way to beat them.

6. Boston Bruins (10) - Said last week I was hankering to move them up. A 3-1 week capped by a win over Pittsburgh was all the motivation I needed to do so.

5. Anaheim Ducks (5) - Tuesday night’s loss to Dallas was an aberration. Nobody gives up three goals in less than a minute without a little bit of luck going against them. That said, giving up six in the game is kind of troubling.

4. San Jose Sharks (8) - Here comes San Jose, winners of five of its last six, to tempt us all again with the forbidden fruit. Making us think they’re the best, strongest, fastest, deepest, best goaltending team in the NHL. Oh, San Jose.

3. Colorado Avalanche (4) - Naysayers said Colorado’s three straight losses meant they’d hit the wall. The Avs would fall back to the pack. Instead they went and beat the defending Cup champs by four goals and won at Phoenix and L.A. Tonight’s showdown with St. Louis is the stuff dreams are made of.

2. Chicago Blackhawks (2) - The first four of a seven-game road trip for Chicago is finished. Since that loss to Colorado to open it, the Blackhawks have outscored their opponents 13-4. Wow.

1. St. Louis Blues (1) - Power rankings across the internet had St. Louis at No. 1 this week for the first time in several weeks or at all. Just saying.

Eric W. Bolin is a Times Record sports writer. Email: ebolin@swtimes.com. Twitter: @EWB_TimesRecord